Question

To Do list overload


Userlevel 3
Badge +3

We have monthly work template setup for all of our clients that have say 20 items for the accountant to do.  What we did not realize is that in the to list, if there are 20 clients for that accountant that the to do list will show 400 items.  If shown that way the to do list doesn’t appear to be very effective when there are 20 to do’s for 20 clients that just say “Reconcile the bank”.  Is there a way so the to do list could just show the monthly task instead of each and every task?  How do you all deal with this.  I am sure we are not the first company to encounter this.


4 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Hi @Dan Yamamoto! 😀

The To-Do list can be overwhelming, for sure. I was completely dependent on the to-do list up to a few weeks ago when I moved exclusively to My Week for personal task tracking. It’s a shift, and comes with its own issues, but I like it a little better.

A couple things you might consider:

  • Do not assign individual tasks to staff, use automation to assign the work to different staff at the appropriate time
  • Use automations to assign the tasks only when they are ready so that the task items only pop in the to-do list when it’s actually time to work
  • Use a kanban board to track work process and trigger accountants to pick up work when it’s in the correct status
  • Use filters in the to-do screen to filter out tasks and only show work, emails, notes, etc.
  • Switch to My Week (work focus instead of task focus)

Each approach has it’s tradeoffs. To-dos is getting depreciated and eventually it will go away, so I would not recommend building your workflow system on the to-do list.

The real power of Karbon is in the kanban work dashboards. It’s a much clearer way to visualize what work needs to be done and when.

Does that help at all?

Userlevel 5
Badge +5

I agree with Max and we can have to do over whelm too.

I don’t tend to look at the to do’s any more. I am driven by the Kaban board and also us my week as my focus - this means that the to do’s are slow reducing without me even having a hand (or eye) on it.

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Same! Mostly….

My Week has taken over my day to day planning and priotizing.

We also utilize ‘sub tasks’ so we only assign the heading task to a person but it may be made up of a number of subtasks that do not get assigned and do not clog up the To-Do list.

It’s hard to see on a screenshot but the sub tasks are indented and we do not assign those.  When you are setting up the tasks you just need to drag them inward.

It is covered in this article on setting up tasks

 

 

Userlevel 1
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I agree with the above. Switching over to myweek from the ToDo list will help this become less overwhelming. From my understanding the To Do List will be phased out at some point and replaced with myweek. 

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